Mama's Boy and Other Dark Tales (4 page)

Still under the Siren's strange spell, Simon observed the rest of the bizarre scene. A vast and ornately carved banquet table was surrounded by every imaginable figure from a world of nightmares. They lounged in the high-back velvet-covered seats, and they milled around with cocktails, mingling and laughing by the light of a hundred candles. Bipeds, quadrupeds, and tentacled guests alike, all were in fine spirits.

"Well, Mr. Rodan, we've been expecting you."

The bald man speaking was heavily muscled and nearly eight feet tall. Wearing an impeccable white tie and tails, he exuded the look of gracious hospitality, the single bulging eye in the center of his forehead glinting in the candle light.

Simon barely blinked at the appearance of his host. The grinding in his gut returned, intensified.

"When we saw you on the beach,” continued the host, “we hoped it would be you who would join us for the feast. And here you are. See, my friends,” he said, with a sweep of his eye around the room. “Dreams do come true."

The crowd of guests roared, some literally, with laughter. Simon didn't get the joke, but he smiled politely. The Cyclops motioned for Simon to take a seat at the table. He glided into his place with the help of his escort. She kissed his cheek, served him a succulent appetizer of barbequed ribs, and stood behind his chair. Sitting across the table, looking terribly bored, a thick-scaled Japanese dragon-lizard picked raw bits of meat from his razor sharp teeth. An occasional puff of smoke escaped his wide nostrils. Beside him, a tidy mummy with a glass of red wine dabbed a dinner napkin at a burgundy stain blossoming on his chest.

"Oh dear,” the mummy said, “and my very best linen, too."

"Would you stop prattling on,” said a red haired clown seated next to Simon. “Can't you see our guest of honor has arrived? And it appears he's thoroughly enjoying the fine cuisine."

As Simon nibbled his appetizer, the clown smiled at him with teeth filed to shark-tooth points.

The grinding in Simon's gut grew insistent and painful. He wiped his mouth with his napkin and pushed his plate away. Holding his stomach, a sour belch escaped him.

A hairy-faced man across the table noticed his discomfort. “Not to worry. Personally, I prefer my meat rare and a little livelier. In fact,” he said, turning to the Cyclops, “could we do something about this Siren's
voodoo
, Cyc? This has all become quite boring. If I wanted a zombie for dinner, I'd eat George over there.” He cocked his thumb at the man with the empty eye sockets and torn suit. “And now that we're on the subject of George, he smells!” He looked around the room and raised his voice. “Doesn't that bother anybody else? And no matter how much he eats, he's never full. Every time we get together it's the same thing—never enough flesh because of George."

The zombie moaned and pushed back his chair.

"Hold it, you two,” said the Cyclops. “Let's be civilized here. It's our vacation, after all. You two can duke it out in some eight-year-old's nightmare when we go back to work."

The zombie moaned again and begrudgingly stayed in his seat.

"All right,” said the werewolf, “but what about livening up this party?"

"Very well,” said the Cyclops, turning to Simon's escort. “Release our guest from his sedation, my sweet Merrow."

The Siren behind Simon's chair laid her cold webbed fingers across his eyes and whispered a few words of Gaelic into his ear. Released from her control, his gnawing stomach exploded into a vomitous plume. He screamed and heaved and screamed some more, as the image of the source of the appetizer connected with his brain. In the center of the table lay the gray corpse of Paulo, his torso splayed open, eviscerated. The boy's facial features morphed into his son's face and back to Paulo's. Simon squeezed his eyes shut, tears seeping from the corners. His screams became wails and sobbing. He'd never cried this way, he'd never felt such sorrow. It was as if he were being turned inside out. His throat burned from the vomit and his ribs ached from the wracking sobs as he heaved the remaining bile from his cramping stomach.

"Hot damn! Now, that's what I'm talking about,” said the hairy-faced man, slapping the table.

The rest of the banquet guests clapped and cheered. The blue-skinned woman began a new selection:
Moonlight Sonata
. While she played, she breathed deeply of the misty air, and with soft ecstasy in her voice and a lilting Hindi accent, she spoke.

"Oh, my dear Cyclops, the villagers have sacrificed well for us this Pouli moon. Have they not?"

"Indeed, sweet lady,” he replied.

"The scent of this one's anguish and the exquisite quality of his nightmares are mouth watering,” she said. “This feast will feed us well, my dear."

The merrow's hands were like steel on Simon's shoulders. Held firmly in his chair, he shuddered convulsively and wept in wretched sobs. The rest of the dinner guests watched with anticipation as the Cyclops strode to the blue woman's side. Gracefully taking his hand, she rose from the piano and accompanied him to Simon's seat. His chair was turned to face her.

One blue hand reached forward and gently lifted his chin. Simon opened his bloodshot eyes, his face flushed and soaked with tears and snot. She leaned in and kissed his forehead, then licked his face with a long forked tongue.

"Delicious."

Like a lust-filled lover, strong blue arms wrapped around him and hands like stone gripped many parts of his body all at once. Simon shrieked as he felt his leg ripped from the socket of his hip, the sound of his flesh tearing like wet canvas ripping apart in a storm. Still conscious, what remained of him was flung onto the long wooden table for the others to share. Simon writhed and fought, the pitch of his screams sending the banquet guests into frenzied competition for their favorite parts of his blood soaked flesh.

Somewhere far away in his fading awareness, Simon heard the voice of the French maître d'.

"Messieurs et Mesdames, an unexpected guest has arrived."

The faint but familiar sound of a native woman's voice was followed by the Cyclops’ reply.

"Hmm ... a trade? We've nearly had our fill, my dear, but such a generous and enticing offer is hard to resist. It's been years since we've had exotic local fare. Our agreement has forbade us from indulging, but since you offered...” His deep, lusty laugh followed.

The dinner guests squealed with slavering delight at the sight of a special course added to the menu—an unexpected dessert. The screams of the woman were the last thing Simon heard before his mind and his unspeakable pain mercifully drifted away into blackness.

After a seemingly endless stretch of black velvet silence, Simon was suddenly assaulted with a flurry of fast-forward images and feelings. In what he realized was a kind of theater of the mind, a place outside his body and outside the physical world, he was a visceral witness to a strange speeding assortment of moments and long-forgotten memories from his life. The nightmare's banquet had left him raw, his well honed numbness providing no protection. He felt the mounting force of each experience like the assault of a gale stripping him bare, his emotional nerves raw and exposed.

...his father's callused hand wrapped around his own small hand as a child—the safety of its hardness and warmth filled his heart; the rich leathery smell of his first baseball mitt was soon followed by the helpless shame of banishment to the outfield—no athletic talent, an embarrassment to his father; the hollow and conspicuous feeling onstage holding yet another award for academic excellence with the glaring absence of his father from the audience; his mother's wrenching sorrow by his father's deathbed and Simon's cold numbness already well intact...

A fleeting moment of relief swept through Simon when the images shifted.

...the pride and crooked gap-toothed grin of Ethan during his first piano recital; putting the boy's small red Little League cap on the dresser after tucking him into bed; his wife's beaming face holding their boy's graduation photo—Simon was sorry to miss the ceremony, but he had to be at that conference; his wife asking him to stay with her during a storm, but work was more urgent—she looked so frail—he'd never noticed—she never complained...

The excruciating parade of life experiences flickered on mercilessly, assaulting Simon with pangs of pride, love, and guilt, each one piercing his heart like fiery needles. The pursuit of his career and forever trying to become someone his father could be proud of had made him numb to the truth, to his blessings, to his family's true value.

His wife and son were proud of him, they loved him, but that wasn't enough. In his blind pursuit, that didn't even factor in, and the cost to them—to the ones he should have cherished most—had been enormous. The dawning realization of the depth of his loss and the price of his pride made him glad for his gruesome end at the hands of the nightmares. He preferred death to this unbearable accounting.

The painful flickering of his failures finally whiplashed to a halt at one of Simon's greatest regrets:

The others, huddled under umbrellas, bled away from his wife's graveside. Simon waited in the rain, watching Ethan across the still-open grave. Nearly grown and in college, he looked so young standing there beside his mother's grave. Hair soaked, arms hanging limp at his sides, the boy's shoulders shook with the quaking of his sobs. Simon stood frozen, helpless to go to his own son, incapable of offering comfort. He shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his overcoat and turned away, walking toward the car. No funeral limo waited; he'd driven them to the cemetery himself.

He waited inside the car, and after a time, Ethan followed.

The pounding of rain on the roof did little to drown the silence between them. As Simon put the key into the ignition, Ethan slammed his fist against the car door.

"Don't you feel anything?” he shouted.

Simon closed his eyes, drew a deep breath and turned the key. Staring straight ahead, he put the car in gear and pulled away from the graveside parking area. He glanced in the mirror. Ethan turned to the window and buried his face in his forearm to weep alone.

Simon felt the weight of his body in a rush. He opened his eyes to a sharp sliver of pale dawn sunlight—a view of the morning sky from Nightmare Cliffs. Ignoring the shattering pain in his body, Simon forced himself to sit up. He was still alive, still intact. He should have been grateful, but after what he'd been through, what he knew of himself, he wasn't sure he could bear it.

The air was fresh after the heavy storm of the previous night, and the breeze made him shiver. It felt as if his skin had been replaced, an old numbness lifted so that he felt vulnerable even to the warmth of the sun and the touch of the wind. Even his sense of smell was heightened, so much so he imagined that he smelled the scent of his wife's perfume drifting through the air. The memory brought real tears, not those from a nightmare. The pain of losing her hit him full on. He'd never grieved her death, but now he had no defense. Sobs wracked his aching body. He wanted to die, rather than feel such pain.

He could hear the sea, so he knew that the edge of the cliff was near, just over the rise of a small hill. The sound drew him. There, he could escape his pain. Not only did he bear the burden of his own family's agony, but he'd betrayed Koma and Peka. He'd taken their son, their beautiful boy, from them. He could never forgive himself and he could never face them.

Dragging himself to his feet, Simon stumbled over rocks and roots, making his way toward the rise. As he staggered to the top of the hill, he saw two women sitting side by side on a flat boulder at the edge of the cliff. Something about them seemed so familiar—one fair-haired, one dark with a ring of pink orchids encircling her head. The wind carried the scent of his wife's perfume to him.

Karen!

There she sat, holding hands with Peka! The women were chatting happily, dangling their feet over the edge of the boulder.

"Karen!"

The two women turned to him and waved. He rushed down the hillside to see them, but his weakened legs betrayed him. He stumbled and fell hard, hitting his head. Dazed, Simon lay in a tangle of vegetation on the rocky plateau. In a gust of wind, he heard his wife's voice calling.

"It's not too late, my love. Take care of our boys."

Ignoring the scrapes from his fall, Simon struggled to free himself from the prickly bushes. He needed to get to Karen. He had to see her.

"It's not too late.” Her voice was fading.

Staggering to his feet, Simon looked toward the cliffs but there was no one in sight. On wobbly legs, he rushed as best he could to the edge of the cliff, to the boulder where Karen and Peka had been sitting.

He called them, looking around frantically. No answer came back, the scent of Karen's perfume lost in the wind.

Simon put his hand on the boulder, feeling the rough surface. It was cold to the touch. He shook his head—just his imagination. Another dream, another nightmare. They were taunting him, punishing him.

Weary of it all, Simon sat down on the boulder. The rising sun slanted a brilliant ray across the stone as if lighting a path before him, inviting him to the edge. Taking a breath to bolster his courage, he walked toward the cliff's edge. A burst of color caught his eye, and there at the brink lay a circlet of pink orchids.

Simon's heart pounded. As he bent to retrieve the ring of flowers, he heard a moan from below the brim of the cliff. On his hands and knees he peered over, and on a ledge below lay Paulo. Curled around his pack, his clothes torn and filthy, Paulo was alive.

Simon scrambled over the edge, his pain and weariness forgotten. At the boy's side, he reached out to touch him. Was he really there? Or was this another cruel trick of the nightmares? But at his touch, the boy's eyes fluttered open. Shielding his face against the bright morning son, he smiled.

"Mr. Simon!” He looked around, his expression perplexed. “How I get here?"

"I don't know, Paulo, but I'm just glad you are.” He embraced the boy, and with a look of surprise, Paulo hugged him back. After an awkward moment, Simon got to his feet and extended his hand to the boy.